Becoming Edna

His Own Woman

With a wig and a team of experts, a comedy writer becomes Edna Turnblad of 'Hairspray'

Cover Story

August 31, 2003|By Story by J. Wynn Rousuck | Story by J. Wynn Rousuck,Photography by David Hobby : Sun Staff

NEW YORK -- Can a tousled, T-shirted, hirsute, 5'11", 280-pound man be transformed into a stylish, bouffant-coiffed 1962 Bawlamer matriarch?

That's exactly what the makeup and hair artists clustered in this 42nd Street rehearsal hall are wondering. Their mission? To transmogrify Bruce Vilanch into Edna Turnblad, the zaftig middle-aged mother in Hairspray, John Waters' movie-turned-Tony-Award-winning-musical, which launches its national tour at the Mechanic Theatre on Sept. 9.

In the musical, it takes only a few verses of the song "Welcome to the '60s," to turn drab, rotund Edna into a model mom (albeit still rotund). In real life, it remains to be seen how long it will take to turn Vilanch -- who's trying on his makeup and wig for the very first time -- into the mother of the musical's irrepressible heroine, a tubby teen determined to win a spot on a local TV dance show.

When Vilanch arrives, his chin displays a few days' stubble, his face is framed by a mop of streaked blond hair, and his eyes sparkle behind an oversized pair of red-rimmed glasses.

If the face is only partly recognizable, that's because last month -- as part of a publicity stunt on national TV -- Vilanch was shorn of the shaggy beard with which viewers of Hollywood Squares came to identify him during his three seasons on the air.

Known primarily as a writer, he has spent most of his career as a backstage comedy scribe, putting words into the mouths of such performers as Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams, as well as crafting scripts for countless televised awards ceremonies, including 15 consecutive Academy Awards programs.

Along the way, he's played bit parts in movies and TV shows (as a dress designer in Mahogany, a decapitated head in Ice Pirates, etc.), performed his one-man show from coast to coast, and even been the subject of a 1999 documentary, Get Bruce! But a lead role in a major touring show is as new to Vilanch as shaving his eyebrows ... which is about to happen.

There's no sign of trepidation, however, as he approaches a table covered with brushes, lipstick, pressed powder, mascara, eyeliner, false eyelashes, a small battery-operated fan, and -- oh, yes -- an electric razor, a disposable razor and scissors.

He sits in a molded plastic chair facing a mirrored wall, accepts the electric razor that is handed to him and starts to shave. And so begins Bruce Vilanch's metamorphosis into Edna Turnblad.

4:35 p.m.

A Star Is Shorn

"This is how it starts," says wig designer Paul Huntley as he watches Vilanch scrape away the stubble that is all that remains of the beard he began growing in 1971.

The comedian / writer had already sacrificed his full beard on the July 24 broadcast of Live with Regis and Kelly. "I had no idea I was bleeding until I went out on the set and Kelly Ripa gave me a look of sheer horror, and I thought, 'My God, Kathy Lee must be standing behind me,' " he recalls.

Of course, to play Edna, Vilanch has to shave more than his face: "His chest, his forearms, obviously his full face including his brows, and his legs -- I think up to mid-thigh.," says makeup designer Justen M. Brosnan. "Around his nether regions he can keep."

Brosnan begins trimming Vilanch's eyebrows with a pair of scissors, then finishes the job with a disposable razor. "Ta-da, the end of the brow," he says.

"I am Whoopi Goldberg," Vilanch proclaims.

4:45 p.m.

Divine Intervention

Brosnan applies foundation while Joy Marcelle, head of the hair department for the Hairspray tour, puts Vilanch's blond locks in pincurls and covers them with a stocking cap. Then, using a stencil, Brosnan traces a pair of eyebrows that arch well above Vilanch's natural browline.

Vilanch is renowned for his ability to capture the persona of whichever star he's writing for, a talent he describes in his 2000 book, Bruce! Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Essays, as "getting under someone's skin."

In Hairspray, he credits Waters and librettists Thomas Meehan and Mark O'Donnell with having laid the groundwork for him. "They've created Edna and I just have to take the road map that they've left," he says.

When Vilanch's eyebrows and stocking cap are in place, Hairspray producers Adam Epstein and Baltimore native Margo Lion drop in to assess the work-in-progress.